Quotes About Comfort

Death is a mercy, and I have enough mercy to go around.

I don't know much about death and the sorriest lesson I've learned is that words, my most trusted guardians against chaos, offer small comfort in the face of anyone's dying.

Talking to Marcia about their engagement, he was almost able to look the other way and rush to embrace the security and predictability and contentment of a normal life lived in normal times.

To a dying person you can repeat yourself forever. They don't care. Just so they can still hear you talking.

Rosa was kneeling next to the bed now, stroking his scalp with one of her warm little hands. "Sick?" she asked. "Low self-esteem.

There are a hundred different ways to hold someone's hand. There are the ways you hold a child's hand, the ways you hold a friend's hand, the ways you hold an elderly parent's hand, the ways you hold the hands of the departing and of the dying and of the dead.

When he is sick, every man wants his mother.

Dependence, humility, simplicity, cooperation, and a sense of abandon are qualities greatly prized in the spiritual life, but extremely elusive for people who live in comfort.

The fact that Jesus came to earth where he suffered and died does not remove pain from our lives. But it does show that God did not sit idly by and watch us suffer in isolation. He became one of us. Thus, in Jesus, God gives us an up-close and personal look at his response to human suffering. All our questions about God and suffering should, in fact, be filtered through what we know about Jesus.

I have mentioned that no one offers the name of a philosopher when I ask the question, "Who helped you most?" Most often they answer by describing a quiet, unassuming person. Someone who was there whenever needed, who listened more than talked, who didn't keep glancing down at a watch, who hugged and touched, and cried. In short, someone who was available, and came on the sufferer's terms and not their own.

Sometimes the only meaning we can offer a suffering person is the assurance that their suffering, which has no apparent meaning for them, has a meaning for us.

But the Lord say he won't put more on us than we can stand. If we can't take it, he'll be right there beside us giving stren'th we didn't know we had.

From Jesus I learn that God is on the side of the sufferer.

instruct the ignorant, counsel the doubtful, admonish sinners, bear wrongs patiently, forgive offences willingly, comfort the afflicted, pray for the living and the dead.

Always, no matter the circumstances, we have the assurance of "Immanuel," which simply means "God with us.

Do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.

no one offers the name of a philosopher when I ask the question, "Who helped you most?" Most often they answer by describing a quiet, unassuming person. Someone who was there whenever needed, who listened more than talked, who didn't keep glancing down at a watch, who hugged and touched, and cried.

Where is the church when it hurts? If the church is doing its job—binding wounds, comforting the grieving, offering food to the hungry—I don't think people will wonder so much where God is when it hurts. They'll know where God is: in the presence of God's people on earth.

A God wise enough to rule the universe is wise enough to watch over his child Job, regardless of how things seem in the bleakest moments.

I used to worry about falling asleep during prayer. Now, as a parent, I understand. What parent wouldn't want her child to fall asleep in her arms?

Who helped you most? Most often they (suffering people) answer by describing a quiet, unassuming person. Someone who was there whenever needed, who listened more than talked, who didn't keep glancing down at a watch, who hugged and touched, and cried. In short, someone who was available, and came on the sufferer's terms and not their own.

Those who mourn sense the rupture of a world severed from God and thus edge closer to the Father who promises to make all things new.

simple availability is the most powerful force we can contribute to help calm the fears of others. Instinctively, I shrink back from people who are in pain.

Naturalist John Muir concluded sadly, "It is a great comfort … that vast multitudes of creatures, great and small and infinite in number, lived and had a good time in God's love before man was created.